In futarchy, democracy would continue to say what we want, but betting markets would now say how to get it. That is, elected representatives would formally define and manage an after-the-fact measurement of national welfare, while market speculators would say which policies they expect to raise national welfare. The basic rule of government would be:

When a betting market clearly estimates that a proposed policy would increase expected national welfare, that proposal becomes law.

I haven’t yet digested this much, but I wanted to see what other people’s initial reaction was to the idea. Is it something we should be discussing more? Obviously it’s not realistically going to happen anytime soon, but with what we’ve learned about markets even in the past decade, what do you think?